Revisionist History of Wanat Afghanistan

By jimstaro - Posted on 30 December 2010

Surprised? Not!! Revisionist history as to War is a constant, can't ruin the upward movement of ranking officers, their military futures and possible comfortable, and highly profitable, retirements after in the defense industry, politics and other! After all they're not in the fire-base's, running the wars from miles away and in these modern times thousands of miles away!

December 29, 2010 - The Army's official history of the battle of Wanat - one of the most intensely scrutinized engagements of the Afghan war - largely absolves top commanders of the deaths of nine U.S. soldiers and instead blames the confusing and unpredictable nature of war.

The history of the July 2008 battle was almost two years in the making and triggered a roiling debate at all levels of the Army about whether mid-level and senior battlefield commanders should be held accountable for mistakes made under the extreme duress of combat.

An initial draft of the Wanat history, which was obtained by The Washington Post and other media outlets in the summer of 2009, placed the preponderance of blame for the losses on the higher-level battalion and brigade commanders who oversaw the mission, saying they failed to provide the proper resources to the unit in Wanat.

The battle of Wanat, which took place in a remote mountain village near the Pakistan border, produced four investigations and sidetracked the careers of several Army officers, whose promotions were either put on hold or canceled. The 230-page Army history is likely to be the military's last word on the episode, and reflects a growing consensus within the ranks that the Army should be cautious in blaming battlefield commanders for failures in demanding wars such as the conflict in Afghanistan.

Family members of the deceased at Wanat reacted with anger and disappointment to the final version of the Army history. {continued}

The clearest indication yet that the war in Afghanistan really is a war across the entire nation and not just a little portion of the southwestern border region came today, when NATO troops confirmed clashes with Taliban forces in the Tora Bora mountains. (linked)

The mountains, in the far eastern Nangarhar Province, were the site of major fighting (linked) during the initial 2001 US invasion, and according to provincial officials there is a growing Taliban presence in the region once again. Strikes against the region were said to have killed at least five. (linked)

The remote district is far removed from Helmand and Kandahar, the supposed centers of this war, but as the insurgency spreads across the nation, even this region has not gone ignored.

Indeed, troops are reporting clashes in a number of outposts in the east (linked), in the far north, in the far west, and everywhere in between. Despite claims of “progress” the war in Afghanistan remains very much a nationwide affair.

The last-linked article about fighting in the east is the following one.

"US troops clash with Taliban in east Afghanistan"
by AP, Dec. 29, 2010

KABUL, Afghanistan – U.S. forces clashed with insurgents in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, fending off a Taliban assault for the second time in as many days.

(snip)

NATO forces are heavily concentrated in the traditional Taliban-stronghold in the south, but the insurgents have increasingly re-expanded their reach, launching attacks in the north while allied militants such as the Haqqani network in Pakistan, have launched attacks in the east.

While NATO says the coalition is making sizable gains in quelling the insurgency, continued violence and chronic instability paint a vastly different picture of the situation in Afghanistan as the war against the Taliban approaches the start of its tenth year.

(snip)

Paktika, which borders with Pakistan, is among the areas where the Taliban and Al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network is active. ...

(snip)

At least AP is not referring to all Afghan resisters, the fighting ones, as Taliban. From what I've gathered, so far, there are three main groups; Taliban, aka Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which evidently is the Taliban who were in power in the central government of the country when the US launched this war in Oct. 2001; the Haqqani Network and Haqqani is also Pashtun and possibly (not sure if I'm remembering this correctly) former Taliban; and the Hekmatayar (spelling) group, while Hekmatayar (spelling?) is not Pashtun, seeming to recall that he's Uzbek. It's important to keep this information "straight". F.e., I read an article over the past week and it said that of the three present main resistance groups, two had accepted to be party with Washington and Big Oil USA about the pipeline, while the Taliban who were in power in Afghanistan's central government were not as agreeable, say. The three groups evidently differ in some important respects, and the pipeline deal or non-deal is only one example.

Too many western media have referred to Afghan resistance as all Taliban and that's deceptive, because the resistance is not under one leadership. There are three main groups and they each have distinct leaderships. There's some commonality, but there apparently are real, serious differences. F.e., the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has never budged from its refusal to accept negotiations until the criminal foreign forces are withdrawn, but we still get "news" reports about Karzai entertaining the idea of holding talks with the Taliban. Which resistance group is meant when western news media make such reports? Evidently not the IEoA. (Watch www.Uruknet.info for their statements.)

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